ascender

It was a strange game though and its interesting to see people's feedback as its a bit like the Scotland game in Lithuania where you read someone's comments about a player and wonder if it was the same game they were watching. The whole team did an amazing job. If I was being picky though, I thought Edu and Davis gave the ball away a lot in the first half and the lack of proper fullbacks also showed. Not criticism, just observations! All the players seemed to improve as the game went on, I guess as confidence and belief grew. Most of the English reports I've read and comments on them do give WS a lot of credit while also pointing out that the Man Yoo team were still paced with players who'd walk in to most other premiership sides. As for the reaction north of the border from fans and media, it just shows them up for the small-minded parochial bunch they are. I fail to believe for one minute that 99% of fans in our position wouldn't be absolutely delighted with a point at Old Trafford, regardless of how they go about it. There's also people saying they'd rather their club went down fighting, regardless of the score. What a load of rubbish. Its the same as the UEFA cup run where we were branded as playing anti-football. I didn't see much mention of this when Man Utd went to Barca and did the same thing. European football has changed over the last 5-10 years beyond all recognition from how it used to be. Its now the same handful of big-spending teams dominating year in, year out, in the same way that they dominate their domestic leagues. How on earth is a team in the SPL supposed to compete with these sides? Even just from a financial point of view, on Tuesday night you have someone like Rio Ferdinand who is on 100K a week. What's our top player on now, 15K or so? Its incredible. At a time when we our country is going to lose our automatic CL place and people have been complaining about the amount of foreigners in the game, I cannot believe that a Rangers team packed full of Scots getting a draw at OT isn't being celebrated. Rant over

I suspect Weir would be the first to speak with Walter if he felt he was struggling. Would be good to see Webster and Fleck get some match time though.

Not had any problems whatsoever Frankie, am using Safari on a mac, iphone, ipad and Firefox on a PC.

That's incredible Frankie. I'm genuinely lost for words.

Very hard to single anyone out, but I think Broadfoot had a particularly good game given all the circumstances.

Payment sent, well done lads, great work.

Hope he makes a full recovery obviously, shocking stuff. Players will I'm sure have had ECGs and ECGs under stress, so they should show up any abnormalities which may put someone at an increased risk of heart failure. The club and player will insist on it for their insurances I'm sure, I've had to provide ECGs to enter some races I've done and that's at a (very) amateur level. I did read somewhere that the heart is an area where we're still learning a lot about it and about more abnormalities all the time, I'm guessing due to advances in screening. Its scary stuff though when you see professional athletes keeling over.

I assume so..... the ball isn't dead until until it goes out of play, is in his hands or has stopped moving in a position where it's not over the line.

But would Ferguson bring us the creative and attacking element we need just now? I don't think there's much doubt that he's a more talented player than Brown or Fletcher, but I'm not sure if he's the one to solve the problem tbh. On the basis of those two games, Charlie Adam would be a better bet to play in the middle for the next match. I liked the look of Morrison when he came on last night, was much more direct and energetic than anyone else.

I thought Fletcher had a better game last night, but was still lacking end-product. he certainly wasn't as anonymous as in the previous game, but it was strange to see the midfield three that were picked as they were far too similar. Morrison looked good when he came on. The fact Levein took McFadden off impressed me, i think that's encouraging for the future if people are going to be in on merit alone. But will he apply that to all? If so, where does that leave Hutton, an out of form Boyd, McManus & Brown and will McGregor be dropped when Gordon is fit? I'm optimistic at the moment, but there's worrying signs. The TA as a whole are even more fickle than club supporters though and can't seem to make their mind up about what players to support or boo and whether they want OF guys in there or not.

Levein seems to be one of those managers who is held in high regard by the media despite not actually achieving much in the game other than mediocrity. Maybe I'm just deluded, but I genuinely think we have a decent squad of players available to us at the moment compared with recent times. So is it wrong to be expecting more from them? Or that we have a manager who can motivate them to produce more?

Its always difficult to tell how a manager is behaving during a match when you're watching it on the telly, but he certainly didn't come across well on the shots that Sky used last night. I thought he'd have been much more animated and trying to get the players to up the tempo, but every time they cut to him he looked like a frightened primary school teacher. I didn't explain myself well Gribz, its a terrible performance and result, but to come away with a 2-1 win 5 minutes in to injury time is an amazing turnaround. You're right, its an embarrassing position to be in, but a win is a win.

That was a terrible performance, but an amazing result, surprised Jig wasn't claiming the goal! With the Lithuania result that puts us off to a great start IMO. Boyd looked like a miserable so and so after the final whistle.

And Lithuania have beaten the Czechs!? If we don't take three points tonight we will have blown a great chance.

Amateur defending. Time to take the ball down and pick his spot.

McFadden seems to try and overplay everything he does, there's times where he needs to play the simple ball.

Good to see the anthem being booed, i thought that was the sort of thing the tartan army never do? All seems a bit disjointed so far, but gaps seem to be starting to open up in their team, we just need to get some decent through balls. Miller looks as likely as anyone to create something for us.

I think some of the forums give a bit of a skewed version of what our support is actually like though. I'd have thought that when we sign someone (with the very odd exception based on their past), 99% of the support will be behind them and want them to be a success. Even if it looks like we've paid over the odds for them or don't rate them, I'm sure nearly all fans will hope they do a good job for us. Lafferty needs to do his talking on the pitch and show he's got the attitude to knuckle down and turn things around. The fact he seems to not learn anything from his previous lessons is maybe why he's struggling to win the fans over. We've all seen players who act like this before, no matter what age they are, but often, these guys have had something special about them which is why they've maybe been cut some slack by the fans and management. I agree though, we are a fickle support, but I think that's true of all football fans to be honest.

Its been a long time since I've seen a match where people's views on the performance are so polar opposites of each other. Reading various places today, it was either a very good performance by the Scotland side or a terrible one. Personally, I'm in between the two camps. Firstly, I think its worth saying that regardless of your view of Levein, he was in a no-win situation. If he went with a more attacking formation from the start and lost an early goal, he'd have been pilloried. As it was, he seems to be attracting a lot of criticism for being too defensive-minded. I think he was right to start as he did, but by half time it was clear that we were the better team both technically & physically, so should have changed to a more attacking formation for the second half. Potentially it could have been a tricky tie. OK, so it turned out that we over-estimated them, but given the points we've dropped in recent times to teams just like Lithuania, I can understand his caution. I thought it was a much more organised and spirited team performance than we saw under Burley and we should at least be optimistic about our chances. Spain are hardly going to drop any points at all and are meanwhile going to take a lot of points off the teams we're going to hopefully be in direct competition with for second place, so I think we have to set a minimum standard of not dropping any points at home and aiming to pick up some away from home. If we win our next match, 4 points from 6 won't look too bad at all imo. While reading some of the media and online forums today, I do wonder who supports Scotland these days as some of the criticism individual players were getting was ridiculous. The fact there were so many Rangers players starting seems to have annoyed many, which is predictable, but depressing all the same. There's no pleasing some. It wasn't that long ago that Rangers were being blamed by all and sundry for everything from the state of the national team to the performance of all clubs in Europe because of the lack of Scots in our squad, not to mention young Scots. Last night saw 6 Gers players start, of all ages and people are still not happy. From where I was sitting, the Gers players came away with a lot of credit and certainly didn't hide which is more than can be said about some others who started. I've always enjoyed watching Scotland and taken pride in their achievements. Of course I've been even happier when its been Rangers players or other favourites of mine doing well, scoring the goals etc, but at the end of the day I don't mind who scores the winning goal, just so long as its for us. I think a successful national team is an important part of having successful club sides and aids player development. On to the players, which I'll try to rate with the blue-tinted shades off. No marks, just a quick mention about each. McGregor - One good save and looked solid, although a bit hesitant to come off his line and claim the ball sometimes, particularly with a few through-balls which caused confusion. Hutton - Played well, I thought he grew in confidence as time went on but never really clicked with Robson as we saw him do before he left us. Maybe he'd have had more luck if Whittaker or Naismith were on the right? Weir - Looked very calm & composed as always. Exactly what we've been lacking in the last few internationals. Was caught out a couple of times, but thanks to limited replays it was hard to see why. Showed why he's still our best option for CB which is a pretty sad indictment of other Scottish defenders. McManus - Looked like an absolute bomb-scare at times. I couldn't believe some of the poor decisions he made and I do wonder if his play contributed to some of the hesitancy and confusion that you saw at times form our back line. Surely we can't stick with him for the next match? Whittaker - Thought he did well and looked more solid defending-wise than he has done in a while, making some good tackles and also a contribution going forward. Also had a few shaky moments which are the norm for him, but with him and Hutton I think we have good options for attacking from the full back position. McCulloch - A good game. Unspectacular, but played a few cracking long passes. Strong (and precise) in the tackle and what I thought was very obvious was how he was marshalling players around him. Robson - Started on the right, but I thought maybe he and Naismith could have swapped over to try and mix things up a bit. I thought he did OK, but some of his decisions were baffling and apart from the free kick which was parried out, thought he was poor from the dead-ball. Brown - I thought he was dire and I can't believe how long Levein left him on the park for. He's got a lot of energy and stamina, but doesn't seem to make good use of it. He was charging around like a bull in a china shop again last night and getting involved in really stupid stuff. He seems to have gone backwards since leaving Hibs and being given more responsibility at Celtic hasn't changed him at all. A real liability. Celtic player or not, I thought he was rank. Fletcher - Anonymous. Miller - Should have done better with that header in particular, but ran his socks off for the whole match. Was unlucky with a few through balls which were over/under/mis-hit from the midfield, so maybe that's just a lack of understanding which will come. I think he'd have had a few more actual chances if McFadden had been brought on earlier. Naismith - Another player who I thought put in a really good shift. He's looking a lot more confident than last year, but looked like a startled rabbit in the headlights when that chance fell to him late on. The subs didn't really have much of a chance to make an impact, although I thought McFadden looked fresh and was at least bringing something different to the side despite over-doing the fancy stuff on a couple of times and losing the ball. I can't understand why he wasn't brought on earlier to make it a more attacking lineup. I have to say, I'm not half as pessimistic as many of the fans seem to be this morning. Besides, we seem to have a short memory about just how bad some of the displays were under Burley. And one last word about last night. When I saw the BBC were covering it I feared the worst but gave them the benefit of the doubt. I won't be making that mistake again. The commentary team were absolutely dreadful and the pundits at half time were just as bad. Really was cringeworthy and embarrassing, is that the best BBC Scotland can do? It was so bad at one point I'd have taken Jock Brown back. Or Archie McPherson. Or Gerry McNee? Nah, maybe not that bad.

Not long in, but Brown has been absolutely terrible so far.

How long has the Hutton one been doing the rounds now? A perfect example of a rumour starting on the internet which goes round and round and round until its suddenly being accepted as fact.

Agreed. Although you have to wonder how he managed to play so many games for United last season?

And you know, the thing is that fans of other clubs have been pleased with failures in Europe because they reckon it will level the playing field in the SPL if Gers and Celtic can't get in to the CL.

Wabash said "Big Dave is a dab hand at creative accounting, or so I am led to believe". As to the rest, I was speaking in broad terms as there seems to be some contradictions (no surprise) in what people are saying about our finances.

Financial idiot here.... You can't have it both ways though can you? If the accounts are being manipulated, then they've been doing a pretty lousy job of it, because they still show a massive debt. I just don't understand the creative accounting suggestions being made. We all know that we have a massive leadership problem within the club, but there can be no doubts surely that we seem to have at least stopped the massive over-spending and appear to be on a much more prudent course. Whatever or whoever has been driving that seems to be doing a good job and thankfully its not cost us on the park yet. I know its not so, but the leadership and finance issues as they stand are kind of separate (although intrinsically linked). One thing is for sure, with all the cost cutting which ha been done very publicly, if the latest accounts don't show a big cut in spending and debt, then we as fans should be up in arms. Although we know we'll probably just sit back and grumble quietly to ourselves instead of banging down SDM's door.....